CHAPTER III

IN WHICH KATHERINE TRIES TO NAIL UP THE WEATHER‐GLASS TO “SET
FAIR”

IT is to be feared that intimate acquaintance with Lady Calmady’s
present attitude of mind would not have proved altogether satisfactory to
that ardent idealist Honoria St. Quentin. For, unquestionably, as the busy
weeks of the London season went forward, Katherine grew increasingly far
from “hating it all.” At first she had found the varied interests and
persons presented to her, the rapid interchange of thought, the constant
movement of society, slightly bewildering. But, as Julius March
page: 293 had foretold, old habits reasserted themselves.
The great world, and the ways of it, had been familiar to her in her youth.
She soon found herself walking in its ways again with ease, and speaking its
language with fluency. And this, though in itself of but small moment to
her, procured her, indirectly, a happiness as greatly desired as it had been
little anticipated.

For to Richard the great world was, as yet, something of an undiscovered
country. Going forth into it he felt shy and diffident, though a lively
curiosity possessed him. The gentler and more modest elements of his nature
came into play. He was sensible of his own inexperience, and turned with
instinctive trust and tender respect to her in whom experience was not
lacking. He had never, so he told himself, quite understood how fine a lady
his mother was, how conspicuous was her charm and distinguished her
intelligence. And he clung to her, grown man though he was, even as a child,
entering a bright room full of guests, clings to its mother’s hand, finding
therein much comfort of encouragement and support. He desired she should
share all his interests, reckoning nothing worth the doing in which she had
not a part. He consulted her before each undertaking, talked and laughed
over it with her in private afterwards, thereby unconsciously securing to
her halcyon days, a honeymoon of the heart of infinite sweetness, so that
she, on her part, thanked God and took courage.

And, indeed, it might very well appear to Katherine that her heroic remedy
was on the road to work an effectual cure. The terror of lawless passion and
of evil, provoked by that fair woman clothed as with the sea‐waves, crowned
and shod with gold, whom she had withstood so manfully in spirit in the wild
autumn night, departed from her. She began to fear no more. For surely her
son was wholly given back to her—his heart still free, his life still
innocent? And, not only did this terror depart, but her anguish at his
deformity was strangely lessened, the pain of it lulled as by the action of
an anodyne. For, witnessing the young man’s popularity, seeing him so
universally courted and welcomed, observing his manifest power of
attraction, she began to ask herself whether she had not exaggerated the
misfortune of that same deformity and the impediment that it offered to his
career and chances of personal happiness. She had been morbid,
hypersensitive. The world evidently saw in his disfigurement no such horror
and hopeless bar to success as she had seen. It was therefore a dear world,
a world rich in consolation and promise. It smiled upon Richard, and so she
smiled upon it, gratefully, trustfully, finding in the plenitude of
page: 294 her thankfulness no wares save honest
ones set out for sale in the booths of Vanity Fair. A large hopefulness
arose in her. She began to form projects calculated, as she believed, to
perpetuate the gladness of the present.

Among other tender customs of Richard’s boyhood into which Katherine, at this
happy period, drifted back was that of going, now and again, to his room at
night, and gossiping with him, for a merry yet somewhat pathetic half‐hour,
before herself retiring to rest. It fell out that, towards the middle of
June, there had been a dinner‐party at the Barkings, on a scale of
magnificence unusual even in that opulent house. It was not the second, or
even the third, time Richard and his mother had dined in Albert Gate. For
Lady Louisa had proved the most assiduously attentive of neighbours. Little
Lady Constance Quayle was with her. The young girl had brightened notably of
late. Her prettiness was enhanced by a timid and appealing playfulness. She
had been seized, moreover, with one of those innocent and absorbing
devotions towards Lady Calmady that young girls often entertain towards an
elder woman, following her about with a sort of dog‐like fidelity, and
watching her with eyes full of wistful admiration. On the present occasion
the guests at the Barking dinner had been politicians of distinction—members
of the then existing Government. A contingent of foreign diplomatists from
the various embassies had been present, together with various notably smart
women. Later there had been a reception, largely attended, and music, the
finest that Europe could produce and money could buy.

“Louisa climbs giddy heights,” Mr. Quayle had said to himself, with an
attempt at irony. But, in point of fact, he was far from displeased, for it
appeared to him the house of Barking showed to uncommon advantage
to‐night.—“Louisa has no staying power in conversation, and her voice is too
loud, but in snippets she is rather impressive,” he added. “And, oh! how
very diligent is Louisa!”

Driving home, Richard kept silence until just as the brougham drew up, then
he said abruptly:—

“Tired? No—that’s right. Then come and sit with me. I want to talk. I haven’t
an ounce of sleep in me somehow to‐night.”

It was hot, and when, some three‐quarters of an hour later, Katherine entered
the big bedroom on the ground floor the upper sashes of the window were
drawn low behind the blinds, letting in the muffled roar of the great city
as an undertone to the intermittent sound of footsteps, or the occasional
passing of
page: 295 a belated carriage or cab. It
formed an undertone, also, to Richard’s memory of the music to which he had
lately listened, and the delight of which was still in his ears and pulsing
in his blood, making his blue eyes bright and dark and curving his handsome
lips into a very eloquent smile as he lay back against the piled‐up pillows
of the bed.

“Good heavens, how divinely Morabita sang,” he said, looking up at his mother
as she stood looking down on him, “better even than in Faust
last night! I want to hear her again just as often as I can. Her voice
carries one right away, out of oneself, into regions of pure and unmitigated
romance. All things are possible for the moment. One becomes as the gods,
omnipotent. We’ve got the box as usual on Saturday, mother, haven’t we? Do
you remember if she sings?”

Katherine replied that the great soprano did sing.

“I’m glad,” Richard said. “And yet I don’t know that it’s particularly
wholesome to hear her. After being as the gods, one descends with rather too
much of a run to the level of the ordinary mortal.”—He turned on his elbow
restlessly, and the movement altered the lie of the bedclothes, thereby
disclosing the unsightly disproportion of his person through the light
blanket and sheet.—“And if one’s own level happens unfortunately to be below
that of even the ordinary mortal—well—well—don’t you know”—

“My dear!” Katherine put in softly.

Richard lay straight on his back again, and held out his hand to her.

“Sit down, do,” he said. “Turn the big chair round so that I may see you. I
like you in that frilly, white, dressing‐gown thing. Don’t be afraid, I’m
not going to be a brute and grumble. You’re much too good to me, and I know
I am disgustingly selfish at times. I was this winter, but”—

“The past is past,” Katherine put in again very softly.

“Yes, please God, it is,” he said,—“in some ways.”—He paused, and then spoke
as though with an effort, returning from some far distance of thought:—“Yes,
I like you in that white, frilly thing. But I liked that new, black gown of
yours to‐night too. You looked glorious, do you mind my saying so? And no
woman walks as well as you do. I compared, I watched. There’s nothing more
beautiful than seeing a woman walk really well—or a man either, for that
matter.”

Then he caught at her hand again, laughing a little.—“No, I’m not going to
grumble,” he said. “Upon my word, mother, I swear I’m not. Here let’s talk
about your gowns. I should
page: 296 like to know,
shall you never wear anything but grey or black?”

“Never, not even to please you, Dickie.”

“Ah, that’s so delicious with you!” he exclaimed. “Every now and then you
bring one up short, one knocks one’s head against a stone wall! There is an
indomitable strain in you. I only hope you’ve transmitted it to me. I’m
afraid I need stiffening.—I beg your pardon,” he added quickly and
courteously, “it strikes me I am becoming slightly impertinent. But that
woman’s voice has turned my brain and loosed the string of my tongue so that
I speak words of unwisdom. You enjoyed her singing too, though, didn’t you?
I thought so, catching sight of you while it was going on, attended by the
faithful Ludovic and little Lady Constance. It’s quite touching to see how
she worships you. And wasn’t Miss St. Quentin with you too? Yes, I thought
so. I can’t quite make up my mind about Honoria St. Quentin. Sometimes she
strikes me as one of the loveliest women here—and she can walk, if you like,
it’s a joy to see her. And then again, she seems to me altogether too long,
and off‐hand somehow, and boyish! And then, too,”—Richard moved his head
against the white pillows, and stared up at the window, where the blind
sucked, with small creaking noises, against the top edge of the open
sash,—“she fights shy of me, and personal feeling militates against
admiration, you know. I am sorry, for I rather want to talk to her about—oh,
well, a whole lot of things. But she avoids me. I never get the
opportunity.”

“My darling, don’t you think that is partly imagination?”

“Perhaps it is,” he answered. “I daresay I do indulge in unnecessary fancies
about people’s manner and so on. I can’t very well be off it, you know. And
everyone is really very kind to me. Morabita was perfectly charming when I
thanked her in very floundering Italian. It’s a pity she’s so fat. But,
never mind, the fat vanishes, to all intents and purposes, when she begins
to sing.—And old Barking is as kind as he can be. I feel awfully obliged to
him, though his ministrations to‐night amounted to being slightly
embarrassing. He brought me cabinet ministers and under‐secretaries, and
gorgeous Germans and Turks, in batches—and even a real live Chinaman with a
pig‐tail. Mother, do you remember the cabinets at home in the Long Gallery?
I used to dream about them. And that Chinaman gave me the queerest feeling
to‐night. It was idiotic, but—did I ever tell you?—when I was a little chap,
I was always dreaming about war or something, from
page: 297 which I couldn’t get away. Others could, but for
me—from circumstances, don’t you know—there was no possibility of scuttling.
And the little Chinese figures on the black, lacquer cabinets were mixed up
with it. As I say, it gripped me tonight in the midst of all those people
and—Oh yes! old Barking is very kind,” he went on, with a change of tone.
“Only I wish Lady Louisa would warn him he need not trouble himself to be
amusing. He came and sat by me, towards the end of the evening, and told me
the most inane stories in that inflated manner of his. Verily, they were
ancient as the hills, and a weariness to the spirit. But that good‐looking,
young fellow, Decies, swallowed them all down with the devoutest attention
and laughed aloud in all that he conceived to be the right places.”

A pause came in Richard’s flow of words. He moved again restlessly and
clasped his hands under his head. Katherine had seldom seen him thus excited
and feverish. A sense of alarm grew on her lest her heroic remedy was, after
all, not working a wholly satisfactory cure. For there was a violence in his
utterance and in his face, a certain recklessness of speech and of
demeanour, very agitating to her.

“Oh, everyone’s kind, awfully kind,” he repeated, looking away at the sucking
blind again, “and I’m awfully grateful to them, but—Oh! I tell you, that
woman’s voice has got me and made me drunk, made me mad drunk. I almost wish
I had never heard her. I think I won’t go to the opera again. Emotion that
finds no outlet in action only demoralises one and breaks up one’s
philosophy, and she makes me know all that might be, and is not, and never,
never can be. Good God! what a glorious, what an amazing, business I could
have made of life if”—He slipped a little on the pillows, had to unclasp his
hands hastily and press them down on either side him to keep his body fairly
upright in the bed. His features contracted with a spasm of anger.—“If I had
only had the average chance,” he added harshly. “If I had only started with
the normal equipment.”

And, as she listened, the old anguish, lately lulled to rest in Katherine’s
heart, arose and cried aloud. But she sought resolutely to stifle its
crying, strong in faith and hope.

“I know, my dearest, I know,” she said pleadingly. “And yet, since we have
been here, I have thought perhaps we had a little underrated both your happy
gift of pleasing and the readiness of others to be pleased. It seems to me,
Dickie, all doors open if you stretch out your hand. Well, my dear, I would
have you go forward fearlessly. I would have you more
page: 298 ambitious, more self‐confident. I see and deplore
my own cowardly mistake. Instead of hiding you away at home, and keeping you
to myself, I ought to have encouraged you to mix in the world and fill the
position to which both your powers and your birth entitle you. I was wrong—I
lament my folly. But there is ample time in which to rectify my
mistake.”

Richard’s face relaxed.

“I wonder—I wonder,” he said.

“I am sure,” she replied.

“You are too sanguine,” he said. “Your love for me blinds you to fact.”

“No, no,” she replied again. “Love is the only medium in which vision gains
perfect clearness, becomes trustworthy and undistorted,”—Instinctively
Katherine folded her hands as in prayer, while the brightness of a pure
enthusiasm shone in her sweet eyes. “That I have learned beyond all
possibility of dispute. It has been given me, through much tribulation, to
arrive at that.”

Richard smiled upon her tenderly, then, turning his head, remained silent for
a while. The sullen roar of the great city invaded the quiet room through
the open windows, the heavy regular tread of a policeman on his beat, a
shrill whistle hailing a hansom from a house some few doors distant up the
square, and then an answering rumble of wheels and clatter of hoofs.
Richard’s face had grown fierce again, and his breath came quick. He turned
on his side, and once more the dwarfed proportions of his person became
perceptible. Lady Calmady averted her eyes, fixing them upon his. But even
there she found sad lack of comfort, for in them she read the inalienable
distress and desolation of one unhandsomely treated by Nature, maimed and
incomplete. Even the Divine Light, resident within her, failed to reconcile
her to that reading. She shrank back in protest, once again, against the
dealing of Almighty God with this only child of hers. And yet—such is the
adorable paradox of a living faith—even while shrinking, while protesting,
she flung herself for support, for help, upon the very Being who had
permitted, in a sense caused, her misery.

“Mother, can I say something to you?” Richard asked, rather hoarsely, at
last.

“Anything—in heaven or earth.”

“But it is a thing not usually spoken of as I want to speak of it. It may
seem indecent. You won’t be disgusted, or think me wanting in respect or in
modesty?”

“Surely not,” Lady Calmady answered quietly, yet a certain
page: 299 trembling took her, a nervousness as in face of
the unknown. This strong, young creature developed forces, presented
aspects, in his present feverish mood, with which she felt hardly equal to
cope.

“Mother, I—I want to marry.”

“I, too, have thought of that,” she said.

“You don’t consider that I am debarred from marriage?”

“Oh no, no!” Katherine cried, a little sob in her voice.

He looked at her steadily, with those profoundly desolate eyes.

“It would not be wrong? It would not be otherwise than honourable?” he
asked.

If doubts arose within Katherine of the answer to that question, she crushed
them down passionately.

“No, my dearest, no,” she declared. “It would not be wrong—it could not,
could not be so—if she loved you, and you loved whomsoever you married.”

“But I’m not in love—at least not in love with any person who can become my
wife. Yet that does not seem to me to matter very much. I should be
faithful, no fear, to anyone who was good enough to marry me. Enough of love
would come, if only out of gratitude, towards the woman who would accept me
as—as I am—and forgive that—that which cannot be helped.”

Again trembling shook Katherine. So terribly much seemed to her at stake just
then! Silently she implored that wisdom and clear‐seeing might be accorded
her. She leaned a little forward and taking his left hand held it closely in
both hers.

Richard flung his body sideways across the bed, and kissed her hands as they
held his. The hot colour rushed over his face and neck, up to the roots of
his close‐cropped, curly hair. He spoke, lying thus upon his chest, his face
half buried in the sheet.

“I want to marry because—because I want a child—I want a son,” he said.

No words came to Katherine just then. But she disengaged one hand and laid it
upon the dear brown head, and waited in silence until the violence of the
young man’s emotion had spent itself, until the broad, muscular shoulders
had ceased to heave and the strong, young hands to grasp her wrist. Suddenly
Richard recovered himself, sat up, rubbing his hands across his eyes,
laughing, but with a queer catch in his voice.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I’m a fool, an awful fool.
page: 300 Hang Morabita and her voice and the golden houses
of the gods, and beastly, showy omnipotence, to which her voice carries one
away! To talk sense—mother—just brutal common sense. My fate is fixed, you
know. There’s no earthly use in wriggling. I am condemned to live a cow’s
life and die a cow’s death.—The pride of life may call, but I can’t answer.
The great prizes are not for me. I’m too heavily handicapped. I was looking
at that young fellow, Decies, to‐night, and considering his chances as
against my own—Oh! I know there’s wealth in plenty. The pasture’s green
enough to make many a man covet it, and the stall’s well bedded‐down. I
don’t complain. Only, mother, you know—I know. Where’s the use of denying
that which we neither of us ever really forget?—And then sometimes my blood
takes fire. It did to‐night. And the splendour of living being denied me,
I—I—am tempted to say a Black Mass. One must take it out somehow. And I know
I could go to the devil as few men have ever gone, magnificently,
detestably, with subtleties and refinements of iniquity.”

He laughed again a little. And, hearing him, his mother’s heart stood
still.

“Verily, I have advantages!” he continued. “There should be a picturesqueness
in my descent to hell which would go far to place my name at the head of the
list of those sinners who have achieved immortality”—

“No,” he answered, simply. “I’d infinitely rather not break your heart. I
have no ambition to see my name in that devil’s list except as an uncommonly
ironical sort of second best. But then we must make some change, some
radical change. At times, lately, I’ve felt as if I was a caged wild
beast—blinded, its claws cut, the bars of its cage soldered and riveted, no
hope of escape, and yet the vigour, the immense longing for freedom and
activity, there all the while.”

Richard stretched himself.

“Poor beast, poor beast, poor beast!” he said, shaking his head and smiling.
“I tell you I get absurdly sentimental over it at times.”

And then, happily, there came a momentary lapse in the entirety of his
egoism. He turned on his side, took Lady Calmady’s hand again, and fell to
playing absently with her bracelets.

“You poor darling, how I torture you!” he said. “And yet, now we’ve once
broken the ice and begun talking of all this, we’re
page: 301 bound to talk on to the finish—if finish there
is. You see these few weeks in London—I’ve enjoyed them—but still they’ve
made me understand, more than ever, all I’ve missed. Life calls, mother, do
you see? And though the beast is blind, and his claws are cut, and his cage
bolted, yet, when life calls, he must answer—must—or run mad—or die—do you
see?”

“Thank you,” he said. “You were made to be a mother of heroes, not of a
useless log like me.—And that’s just why I want to be good. And to be good I
want a wife, that I may have that boy. I could keep straight for him,
mother, though I’m afraid I can’t keep straight for myself, and simply
because it’s right, much longer. I want him to have just all that I am
denied. I want him to restore the balance, both for you and for me. I may
have something of a career myself, perhaps, in politics or something. It’s
possible; but that will come later, if it comes at all. And then it would be
for his sake. What I want first is the boy, to give me an object and keep up
my pluck, and keep me steady. I, giving him life, shall find my life in him,
be paid for my wretched circumscribed existence by his goodly and complete
one. He may be clever or not—I’d rather, of course, he was not quite a
dunce—but I really don’t very much mind, so long as he isn’t an outrageous
fool, if he’s only an entirely sound and healthy human animal.”

Richard stretched himself upon the bed, straightened the sheet across his
chest, and clasped his hands under his head again. The desolation had gone
out of his eyes. He seemed to look afar into the future, and therein see
manly satisfaction and content. His voice was vibrant, rising to a kind of
chant.

“He shall run, and he shall swim, he shall fence, and he shall row,” he said.
“He shall learn all gallant sports, as becomes an English gentleman. And he
shall ride,—not as I ride, God forbid! like a monkey strapped on a dog at a
fair, but as a centaur, as a young demi‐god. We will set him, stark naked,
on a bare‐backed horse, and see that he’s clean‐limbed, perfect, without
spot or blemish, from head to heel.”

And once more Katherine Calmady held her peace, somewhat amazed, somewhat
tremulous, since it seemed to her the young man was drawing a cheque upon
the future which might, only too probably, be dishonoured and returned
marked “no account.” For who dare say that this child would ever come to the
birth, or, coming, what form it would bear? Yet, even so,
page: 302 she rejoiced in her son and the high spirit he
displayed, while the instinct of romance which inspired his speech touched
an answering chord in, and uplifted, her.

By now the brief June night was nearly spent. The blind still creaked against
the open window sash, but the thud of horse‐hoofs and beat of passing
footsteps had become infrequent, while the roar of the mighty city had
dwindled to a murmur, as of an ebbing tide upon a shallow, sand‐strewn
beach. The after‐light of the sunset, walking the horizon, beneath the Pole
star from west to east, broadened upward now towards the zenith. Even here,
in the heart of London, the day broke with a spacious solemnity. Richard
raised himself, and, sitting up, blew out the candles placed on the table at
the bedside.

“Mother,” he said, “will you let in the morning?”

Lady Calmady was pale from her long vigil, and her unspoken, yet searching,
emotion. She appeared very tall, ghostlike even, in her soft, white raiment,
as she moved across and drew up the sucking blind. Above the grey parapets
of the houses, and the ranks of contorted chimney‐pots, the loveliness of
the summer dawn grew wide. Warm amber shaded through gradations of exquisite
and nameless colour into blue. While, across this last, lay horizontal lines
of fringed, semi‐transparent, opalescent cloud. To Katherine those heavenly
blue interspaces spoke of peace, of the stilling of all strife, when the
tragic, yet superb, human story should at last be fully told and God be all
in all. She was very tired. The struggle was so prolonged. Her soul cried
out for rest. And then she reminded herself, almost sternly, that the
Kingdom of God and the peace of it is no matter of time or of place; but is
within the devout believer, ever present, immediate, possessing his or her
soul, and by that soul in turn possessed. Just then the sparrows, roosting
in the garden of the square, awoke with manifold and vociferous chirping and
chattering. The voice from the bed called to her.

“Mother,” it said imperatively, “come to me. You are not angry at what I have
told you? You understand? You will find her for me?”

Lady Calmady turned away from the open window and the loveliness of the
summer dawn. She was less tired somehow. God was with her, so she could not
be otherwise than hopeful. Moreover, the world had proved itself very kind
towards her son. It would not deny him this last request, surely?

“My dearest, I think I have found her already,” Lady Calmady answered.

page: 303

Yet, even as she spoke, she faltered a little, recognising the energy and
strength manifest in the young man’s countenance, remembering his late
discourse, and the pent‐up fires of his nature to which that discourse had
borne only too eloquent testimony. For who was a young girl, but just out of
the school‐room, a girl in pretty, fresh frocks—the last word of
contemporary fashion,—whose baby face and slow, wide‐eyed gaze bore witness
to her entire innocence of the great primitive necessities, the rather
brutal joys, the intimate vices, the far‐ranging intellectual questionings,
which rule and mould the action of mankind,—who was she, indeed, to cope
with a nature such as Richard’s?

“Mother, tell me, who is it?”

And instinctively Katherine fell to pleading. She sat down beside the bed
again and smoothed the sheet.

“You will be tender and loving to her, Dickie?” she said. “For she is young
and very gentle, and might easily be made afraid. You will not forget what
is due to your wife, to your bride, in your longing for a child?”

“Who is it?” Richard demanded again.

“Ludovic’s sister—little Lady Constance Quayle.”

He drew in his breath sharply.

“Would she—would her people consent?” he said.

“I think so. Judging by appearances, I am almost sure they would
consent.”

A long silence followed. Richard lay still, looking at the rosy flush that
broadened in the morning sky and touched the bosoms of those delicate clouds
with living, pulsating colour. And he flushed too, all his being softened
into a great tenderness, a great shyness, a quick yet noble shame. For his
whole attitude towards this question of marriage changed strangely as it
passed from the abstract, from regions of vague purpose and desire, to the
concrete, to the thought of a maiden with name and local habitation, a
maiden actual and accessible, whose image he could recall, whose pretty
looks and guileless speech he knew.

“I almost wish she was not Ludovic’s sister, though,” he remarked presently.
“It is a great deal to ask.”

“You have a great deal to offer,” Katherine said, adding:—“You can care for
her, Dickie?”

He turned his head, his lips working a little, his flushed face very young
and bright.

“Oh yes! I can care fast enough,” he said. “And I think—I think I could make
her happy. And, you see, already she worships you. We would pet her, mother,
and give her all
page: 304 manner of pretty things,
and make a little queen of her—and she would be pleased—she’s a child, such
a child.”

Richard remained awake far into the morning, till the rose had died out of
the sky, and the ascending smoke of many kitchen‐chimneys began to stain the
expanse of heavenly blue. The thought of his possible bride was very sweet
to him. But when at last sleep came, dreams came likewise. Helen de
Vallorbes’ perfect face arose, in reproach, before him, and her azure and
purple draperies swept over him, stifling and choking him as the salt waves
of an angry sea. Then someone—it was the comely, long‐limbed, young soldier,
Mr. Decies—whom he had seen last night at the Barkings’ great party when
Morabita sang—and the soprano’s matchless voice was mixed up, in the
strangest fashion, with all these transactions—lifted Helen and all her
magic sea‐waves from off him, setting him free. But, even as he did so,
Dickie perceived that it was not Helen, after all, whom the young soldier
carried in his arms, but little Lady Constance Quayle. Whereupon, waking
with a start, Dickie conceived a wholly unreasoning detestation of Mr.
Decies; while, along with that, his purpose of marrying Lady Constance
increased notably, waxed strong and grew, putting forth all manner of fair
flowers of promise and of hope.